Economic Stimulation, or Economic Confiscation?

In 2007 Thomas Sowell wrote (concerning Big Government setting price controls),

In new York City, for example, many buildings have been abandoned after their owners found it impossible to collect enough rent to cover the costs of services that they are required by law to provide… such buildings often end up vacant and boarded up, though still physically sound enough to house people, if they continued to be maintained and repaired. The number of abandoned buildings taken over by the New York City government over the years runs into the thousands. It has been estimated that there are at least four times as many abandoned housing units in New York City as there are homeless people living on the streets there. Homelessness is not due to a physical scarcity of housing, but to a [government controlled] price related shortage, which is painfully real nonetheless. Such inefficiency in the allocation of resources means that people are sleeping outdoors on the pavement on cold winter nights – some dying of exposure – while the means of housing them already exist, but are not being used because of laws designed to make housing “affordable.” … It also illustrates that the goal of a law – “affordable housing,” in this case – tells us nothing about its actual consequence.[1]

Once again we see misplaced faith and emotion driven policies are a huge mistake. What matters is God’s laws. It is not the government’s job to be the savior of man. It is the government’s job to protect liberty. In how many town hall meetings have people cried out to President Obama (instead of God) as if he was the Savior? The government’s purpose is stated by God (Romans 13.1-7), and to go beyond that purpose places our nation in the path of judgment… just ask those who sought to build the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11).

Our public schools have trained their students well. “Don’t base anything upon rational thinking… just be emotion driven. Poor people are on the streets, and greedy capitalists are the problem. Look at these poor people **As they show pictures of poor people** Government should do something.”

Train your children to ask, “Why?” “Who says that it is the government’s role to do something?” Again, all agree that something should be done to aid the plight of the poor. But, what should be done, and in what way should it be done? That is the question.

How can you teach that taking care of the poor is even the right thing to do if you deny the very existence of God? If a public school teaches the religion of atheism, (God is irrelevant to life) then who decides the standards of what is good? Does Oprah decide that it is good and right to take care of the poor? Why not adopt Hitler’s standards and allow “extreme exposure” to exterminate the surplus population of the weaker race?

Whatever has the authority to say something is morally wrong is the standard. Is the standard for caring for the poor, Oprah Winfrey? Barak Obama? The party with the most votes? No… the standard for right and wrong is Jesus Christ. His word outlines the plan for economic growth which will take care of the poor. This Word of God is trustworthy compared to the confiscation of wealth done by trusting in Big Government to save (socialism, fascism, communism, etc.).

"Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism." --French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

For Obama's confiscation of GM: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31342

For government intervention on forcing loans: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=94031
[1] Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, (Basic Books Publishing, New York, 2007) p. 46.